Putting The "U" Back In Labour

Labor Day weekend, the official end of summer is here (though I tend to cling to the notion that it lingers until September 20, when the Vernal Equinox occurs). Aside from a reminder to put those white bucks back into the closet for another year, it's also a time to reflect on the efforts of organized labor here in the United States - and to fire up the grill one last time.
I will probably do both this year, as the past twelve months have afforded me an up-close and personal view of labor relations. Way back when I first signed up to do this teaching gig, I wondered when I would get a chance to decide whether or not to join the union. I was clever enough to have anticipated the existence of a teacher's union, I just didn't know that by signing a contract with the district that I was signing a contract with the Oakland Education Association. I had never been a union man before that - quite to the contrary. I had been on the "management" side of things for most of my working life. I was that guy with a clipboard and an extra set of keys. I was "the man."
Still, I understood the history and purpose of labor organization, and agree with the loose definition: "A Trade Union (Labour union), ... is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." I'm a big fan of worker's rights, especially when I'm working. The challenge I encountered was the somewhat Byzantine nature of union politics. More to the point, I discovered the extremely Byzantine nature of Oakland Teachers' union politics.
Over the past several years, the Oakland Unified School District has suffered and struggled through a great many financial and organizational crises. There were month long strikes in 1986 and 1996, the year before I became a teacher. This past year, after wrestling with a state administrator for several months, another strike was narrowly avoided by a settlement at the proverbial eleventh hour. The result of this "victory" for this union member was a nine hundred dollar deduction from the last paycheck of the year, with the promise of an ongoing two percent raise that would be retroactive from the previous year. The deduction was part of the settlement, and it essentially covered the extra days that I had already worked beyond those contractually obligated - they were "voluntary" then, and became "required."
I confess I'm still not completely sure how it all worked out, since I spend most of my contractually obligated hours unraveling fourth grade math, and reading, and California history, and then spend numerous additional hours preparing to unravel those mysteries both at school and at home, before collapsing in a teaching-induced coma on Friday night. So here's the deal: Back in April, I got a call from our local Peace Action group, asking us for an additional donation to help support their efforts to inform and support "Peace Voting" in the upcoming mid-term elections. At the time, I related to this patient volunteer that my heart was certainly there, but I was concerned that my family might be needing our extra nickels and dimes if there was a teachers' strike. I evoked the classic bumper sticker in my response: "What if the schools had all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?"
It's time to put my money where my mouth, or my bumper sticker, is. I'll be sending along a little extra to Peace Action this month - not the whole two percent raise - but something that starts to make sense to me, balancing out all of my political convictions.